Sexualidade e gênero na Amazônia urbana do Peru

Abstract

Since colonial times, the topic of sexuality in the Peruvian Amazon region has been the object of diverse discursive elaborations in which ideas as intensity and disorder have been highlighted. Those conceptions have crystallized in pervasive and persisting representations all around Peru, being the most paradigmatic the charapa ardiente a hypersexualized representation of the Amazonian women. These ubiquitous discourses and the lack of academic literature about sexuality in the region have motivated this research. Its main objective is to explore the place of sexuality in the construction of personhood, among women of the Peruvian urban Amazon. In order to reach that purpose a review of secondary sources was carried out, where the origin of this representation and its process of recreation through the country s history was tracked. After that, on the basis of information obtained throughout in-depth interviews with Amazonian women, their opinions regarding the representation were explored, and also the ways to cope with it in concrete circumstances of their everyday lives. Their narratives showed processes of denial, as well as reproduction and resignification, in a complex and flexible interplay that vary according to the context. On the other hand, sexual and affective trajectories of these women were also elaborated through the in-depth interviews. Diverse topics were explored: sexual initiation, feminine unfaithfulness, valuation of sexual activity and sexual-economic exchange, among others. On the basis of them, the structuring axes of these women s sexual lives were identified. Among them the most important was a relational discourse that highly values reciprocity as the frame of sexual life. On a secondary level, it was found a rhetoric that considers sexual activity as an important corporeal necessity. Finally, this research evidences an important role of sexuality as a feminine resource, in the economic level, intimately intertwined with affective dimensions and family considerations. It is the realm of sexual-economic exchange that constitutes the ordinary dynamics of reciprocity in relationships between men and women involving sex and affection.